


i'll lay you down

by MissAtomicBomb (mrs_nerimon)



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-22
Updated: 2019-04-22
Packaged: 2020-01-24 03:28:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18562978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrs_nerimon/pseuds/MissAtomicBomb
Summary: Arya Stark is no stranger to death. She is far more surprised by the small comforts that have come right before it.





	i'll lay you down

**Author's Note:**

> [mouthing] what the fuck y'all. they deadass gave us forgesex. blessed.

“After,” Gendry kisses the word into her neck, soft as anything, the question melting away on her skin. “Arya, after-“

She meets his mouth to shut him up. As a child she might have hit him, shoved him down. She’s glad there’s a third option now.

“ _Arry_ ,” Gendry pulls away, hands tangled in her hair, blue eyes piercing through her. He looks at her with a feeling she doesn’t know the name for, a depth of emotion she thought she’d only seen before from her bastard brother.

 _I’m Robert Baratheon’s bastard_. The words strike deep in her core again; fear and anger over what he’s gone through, what she wasn’t able to protect him from. King’s blood, the Red Woman. All because of that fat old sot. Her father’s best friend.

She wonders suddenly what Father would think of her now, naked and in bed with the bastard son of Robert Baratheon, hours before her life may come to an end.

“Arry, please.” He holds her face so gently, the way she used to handle Needle before her water dancing lessons. Excitement and happiness, but with the fear that it might hurt her.

“Yes?”

“After the battle. Would you- Are you…. Are we-“ He stumbles over his words and she wants to kiss him again, for so long she feels that burning in her chest.

“Yes,” she knows what he means, what he wants. Gendry knows what it is to grow up a bastard; he would never wish that on his own child. And this, now, for all she hopes it hasn’t put a baby in her belly, isn’t going to stop. She certainly doesn’t want it to.

Gendry smiles so wide it might split his face, like she’s promised him all seven kingdoms. His hand rests over the scars on her hip, finger tracing the healed cuts. She wonders why it doesn’t make her recoil, to feel someone pinpoint her weakness like that. Why she only feels a warmth spreading up her spine, licking through her body like dragon fire.

“Arya.”

He likes to say her name, she’s found. He mumbled it over and over, hands on her body, mouth on hers. _Arya, Arya, Arry._

She wants to tell him Arry never existed, just like Nan or Weasel or No One. She was always Arya, deep, deep inside. But he knows that, she thinks. He’s always known who she is, even when nobody else did.

“We have to make it to after,” she tells him practically, and Gendry only smiles again.

“You will,” he promises, his voice deep and sure. He blinks up at her, sleepy eyes and silly grin stuck on his face. Her chest aches so deeply she almost fears a wound.

“Aye. As will you,” she lays her head down, adjusting to hear the steady beating of his heart, thrumming confidently beneath her ear. His hand comes up to stroke her hair, and she wonders how to keep this moment inside her forever.

Tomorrow they will face the dead. A tireless army marches on her home, come to take her family, to threaten everyone she holds close. But for now, for one single moment, she has this. And it’s enough.


End file.
